Thanks for the position statement!. Your evaluation of what you believe are warranted philosophical issues arrives at a normative worldview among the artsy type. It surely is as good as any; and better than most. Radical subjectivity doesn't sound measurable, so not compatible with my pragmatic cup-o-tea.
Modern science, which includes science tools to measure formal information and evaluate logical processes, opens-up methods for analysis, not available in the past. I am not pushing a stance, just defining what philosophical stance I have taken to prevent bias. My goal is to present an active viewpoint for the methodology of examining natural processes with data from 2 or more levels of abstraction (LoA). There are levels of math analysis of physical data. What is "new" is the levels of data analysis regarding the presence of formal information and the natural logic with which the universe operates. To understand the hard problem we need the second category of relations to be mapped as well as the first. Science must continue on this path of measuring the empirical nature of information systems as a compliment to physical data analysis.
Hence, my strong support for G. Tononi et all, in their research on the integration of bio-information.
That you cannot see IR (informational realism) as a direct contradiction to Materialism, is simply because you have not read about the subject.
Sean Carroll sees a world of particles and believes they have special "matter category" properties that magically make the world around them orderly. In the context of this intuition about reality, are all arguments for Physicalism.
I see a world of physical objects of all scales; and in addition, probable informational objects, supporting the meaningful interaction of a Participatory Universe (Wheeler). These categories and entities are MEASURABLE AND PREDICTABLE. Living things naturally interact in all the environments of activity looking for the resources of energy, structure, knowledge and understanding. It's just there are no "energy" sources in the informational environment. or ideas (like memory traces) in the physical environment. This sorting leads away from theory. The method gets down to empirical (or quasi-empriical) explorations revealing how nature weaves mass, force, bytes and deep meaning into the universe's many environments.
Hi Stephen
Thank you for your response
Some queries and reflections from my perspective
You wrote:
"Radical subjectivity doesn't sound measurable, so not compatible with my pragmatic cup-o-tea"
Quite right; the knowing subject is not directly objectifiable or measurable
However, it is the knowing subject who objectifies and measures and is pragmatic
You wrote
"What is "new" is the levels of data analysis regarding the presence of formal information and the natural logic with the universe operates"
Do you mean to say that formal logic is present in nature itself; and is how nature functions?
Floridi wrote:
" The outcome is informational realism, the view that the world is the totality of informational objects dynamically interacting with each other."
My point is that objects may be construed as information by a knower; ie as having informational significance and function in the knower's system of thinking about and modelling the world of objects
But I would argue that the world of objects is not ontologically information; in a similar way that I would argue that the sky is not ontologically blue; or that grass is not ontologically green
Blue and green are subjective experiences of a knower; they are epistemological - not ontological
Information in its normal use denotes meaning or significance in the experience of a knowing subject
The problem I see in your philosophy of informational realism is that it projects the informational structure of knowing (epistemology) as the objective ontological structure of the world
In my view this is a very basic and common error of human thinking
Mistaking the map for the territory and metaphors for realities is perhaps the most common error in human intellectual endeavour
You wrote:
"The method gets down to empirical (or quasi-empirical) explorations revealing how nature weaves mass, force, bytes and deep meaning into the universe's many environments."
This sentence displays the fundamental confusion I see in your philosophy
You weave together epistemological and ontological categories as if they are equivalent